Re: """Standard""" software (was: Re: Early-2014 Macbook Air and Linux Mint Cinnamon)

On 2026-06-26, Your Name <[email protected]> wrote:

> Microsloth Windoze and Orifice have unfortunately been basically 
> business standards for multiple decades now. Word was first released in 
> 1983 and "Office" (with Excel, etc.) in 1989.

Don't forget Outlook - which is more correctly pronounced "Look out!"
It is the biggest disease vector for top-posting.

> Even if people don't use Orifice themselves, almost every document you 
> come across (other than PDFs) is in .doc format because that gives the 
> widest potential compatibility ... as long as it's a simple document. 
> If it's a complex document, then compatibility tends to go out the 
> window. (For example, TextEdit and QuickLook on the Mac can read and 
> write .doc / .docx format files, but even mildly complicated formatting 
> will end up looking a mess, especially in QuickLook.)

I've had pretty good results with LibreOffice, although I don't
spend much time in spreadsheet land.  LO doesn't seem to be as
fanatical about meddling with your data - I've spent a lot
of time designing my software to write CSV files that are
"Excel-proof".  I'm tired of bringing up a file to view,
and upon quitting having Excel say, "Would you like to save
the changes you've just made?"  Dammit - I didn't make _any_
changes!  At the very least, the message should read: "Would
you like to save the changes _I've_ made?"  Yes, that includes
Excel's edict that all dates shall be in month/day/year format,
and that anything looking vaguely like a year/month/day date
shall be reformatted.  And, of course, lines with trailing
fields omitted shall be padded with commas, quotes, etc.

In fact, I prefer LibreOffice's spreadsheet to Excel, primarily
because when I pull in a CSV file it automatically sets the
column widths to something reasonable, rather than requiring
you to manually select the hilariously-misnamed "Auto format".

-- 
/~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  No artificial
\ /  <[email protected]>      |  intelligence was
 X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  used in the creation
/ \  if you read it the right way.  |  of this post.